myininaya

2 years ago

So what is music theory exactly? Pretend we have a guitar and I want to know how to play "yellow submarine" on it, but I didn't want to learn how to play it by reading notes. I wanted to learn it by knowing what strings to pluck. Is that music theory still? I bet that would be kinda hard to explain in this group with just the draw tool and the attachment tool but it might be doable.

What you're describing is called "Tablature", "tabs" for short, "guitar tabs" for the in between length.
But there is still music theory very much involved there, but it's sort of masked to the player. It's much easier to share music online this way rather than having to write out the "score" (actually notes).

A lot of guitarists don't even bother learning "real sheet music" since they can get by with tabs or just playing by ear. Notably, the Beatles. Ironically, the theory behind their music was incredibly unique.

Here is an example tab:
e------------------------------
b------------------------------
g------------------------------
d-------------2-0---4----0-2----
a----------2------2----2--------
e--0--3-4-----------------------
Those correspond with each guitar string and what note to hit on it in what order. Rhythm is not really able to be easily translated to tabs unfortunately, which is one of its downfalls.

haha except some young ones. They were bashing the beatles on chat. I be like "blasphemy!" (lols I'm only 17 though)and yay! new people are always welcome. I kinda wish @Dyiliq would come on one of these days, too lol

Yea those are the notes. 0 means "open" (the string is plucked but not with any note held down). Any other number means pluck this string while holding it down at a specific "fret", the name for the dividers on the neck.

well you can tune in to my tutorials on the music group @myininaya i post music theories ^_^ hehe this is me endorsing meself :DDD (as of now i have 3...currently working on an anthology of tutorials for reading tablatures but not going to spill deets :S)

and @mattfeury i think some tablature writers have their ways of expressing beats (aside from h,p, b, and s) they sometimes have this
E --------------|-------------------------|
B --------------|-------------------------|
G --------------|-------------------------|
D --------------|-------------------------|
A --------------|-------------------------|
E---------------|-------------------------|
i am referring to the | things...which resembles them good old bars in sheet musics...and also some distance the numbers from one another but yeah it is hard =_=

and if @myininaya wants to learn songs she can always check out http://www.ultimate-gutar.com although it is written in tabs and chords there...but if she checks out my anthology of tutorials im sure she can read them :DD